Compiled by MCJ Staff Just as they were quick to condemn the Fire and Police Commission, two city aldermen were just as quick to praise it for reversing an earlier ruling that reinstated a Milwaukee Police officer fired for hitting a handcuffed Northside woman repeatedly in the face. Police officer Richard Schoen again finds himself out of a job and possibly facing criminal charges after the commission decided to uphold the original decision of Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn to fire Schoen for assaulting Jeanine Tracy in the back of a squad car while in the parking lot of the District 7 police station in September of last year. The commission reversal comes a week after their initial ruling touched off a firestorm of criticism from community and political leaders who called for the overhaul or dismantling of the commission that oversees and disciplines members of the city’s fire and police departments and their respective leadership. “The Commission did the right thing when it chose to review the decision regarding Officer Schoen,” said Ald. Milele Coggs in a statement released after the ruling. Coggs, who last week called for either the restructure or elimination of the Commission and the laws governing its existence, noted the Commission discovered during its reevaluation that state law and Commission rules call for them to give greater weight to the chief’s original determination to fire the officer. “They continued their deliberations with the revised information and concluded that Officer Schoen should be fired,” Coggs said. “I applaud the Commission for doing the right thing for the right reasons. Now we have to help the city move forward and improve our police-community relations.” Coggs suggested the Milwaukee County District Attorney take a fresh look at the case of Officer Schoen and explore the possibility of charges. Common Council President Willie Hines, Jr. said the Commissions reversal not only holds Schoen accountable, but gives the community something to hope for. “When officers get it right, we must applaud them,” said Hines in a statement. “When officers exercise the kind of brutal disregard for regulations and human well-being displayed by Officer Schoen they must be held accountable. “This ensures the protection of our citizens’ most basic rights, as well as the ability of the rule-abiding, vast majority of police officers to ensure residents safety. “It is my sincere hope that this is only the beginning of a bigger movement toward accountability and transparency in our Milwaukee Police Department.”

In this Sept. 26, 2012 file photo, A man heads into the the Penndot Drivers License Center in Butler, Pa., near a sign telling of the requirement for voters to show an acceptable photo ID to vote. Some political momentum could be on the line in a judge’s forthcoming ruling on Pennsylvania’s tough new voter identification law. Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson is expected to rule Tuesday. That’s just five weeks before voters decide whether to re-elect President Barack Obama, a Democrat, or replace him with Mitt Romney, a Republican. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)

Harrisburg, Pa. (AP) — Some political momentum could be on the line when a judge rules on whether to keep intact Pennsylvania’s tough new law requiring voters to show photo identification in next month’s presidential election.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson is under a state Supreme Court order to rule no later than Tuesday, just five weeks before voters decide whether to re-elect President Barack Obama, a Democrat, or replace him with Mitt Romney, a Republican.

Simpson heard two days of testimony last week and said he was considering invalidating a narrow portion of the law for the Nov. 6 election. An appeal to the state Supreme Court is possible.

Up for grabs are Pennsylvania’s valuable 20 electoral votes, the sixth most. For now, Republican candidates are trailing in polls on the state’s top-of-the-ticket races.

The law, opposed furiously by Democrats, has nevertheless been a valuable Democratic Party tool to motivate volunteers and campaign contributions as other critics, including the NAACP, AARP and the League of Women Voters, hold voter education drives and protest rallies.

In recent months, Republicans have sent out fundraising appeals highlighting legal challenges to the law or an inquiry into the law by Obama’s Department of Justice, and the party no doubt would add a court defeat to its rallying cry.

The state’s Republican Party chairman, Rob Gleason, insisted Monday that supporting the law is about good policy, not about motivating party voters. But then he criticized Democrats for opposing the law and for using it as an election issue.

Don Adams of the Philadelphia-area Independence Hall Tea Party Association said his membership of thousands is closely watching the issue.

“I think it’ll drive our people even more, but I think they’re already driven,” Adams said. “I don’t know how much more you can drive them.”

Christopher Borick, a pollster and assistant professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said he would expect Republicans to use the law’s defeat to warn of higher Democratic voter turnout and make it part of the case for why efforts to turn out Republican voters are essential.

Pennsylvania’s new law, among the toughest in the nation, is a signature accomplishment of Republicans in control of Pennsylvania state government who say they fear election fraud. But it is an emotional target for Democrats who call it a Jim Crow-style scheme to make it harder for their party’s traditional voters, including young adults and minorities, who might not carry the right kind of ID or know about the law.

It was already a political lightning rod when a top state Republican lawmaker boasted to a GOP dinner in June that the ID requirement “is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

The high court told Simpson that he should stop the law from taking effect in this year’s election if he finds the state has not met the law’s promise of providing easy access to a photo ID or if he believes it will prevent any registered voter from casting a ballot.

The injunction Simpson was considering revolves around the portion of the law that allows a voter without valid photo ID at the polls to cast a provisional ballot. It would effectively excuse those voters from having to get a valid photo ID and show it to county election officials within six days after the election to ensure their ballot will count. Instead, they might be required to submit a signed declaration to the county.

Last week, Simpson heard testimony about the state’s ongoing efforts to remove bureaucratic barriers for people to get a valid photo ID. He also heard about long lines and ill-informed clerks at driver’s license centers and identification requirements that made it harder for some registered voters to get a state-issued photo ID.

A man linked to an anti-Islam video that sparked riots across the Muslim world has been held without bail after a hearing in Los Angeles, California.

A judge said Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was a flight risk and cited a pattern of deception when making her ruling.

Nakoula was investigated for violating probation terms after he was released from prison in 2011 for bank fraud.

He has not been detained over the contents of the inflammatory video.

Nakoula, a 55-year-old Christian originally from Egypt, allegedly produced the 14-minute trailer for the film Innocence of Muslims.

First amendment

He had been in hiding after the release of the video.

After his 2010 conviction, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison and, under the terms of his probation, he was banned from using computers or accessing the internet for five years without an officer’s permission.

US Central District Chief Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal said: “The court has a lack of trust in this defendant at this time”.

Assistant Attorney Robert Dugdale said the court believed Nakoula was a flight risk.

“He has every incentive to disappear,” he said.

His defence lawyer, Steven Seiden, had sought to have the hearing closed and his client released on bail.

Mr Seiden was concerned that his client would be in danger in federal prison because of Muslim inmates, but prosecutors argued Nakoula would be placed in protective custody.

Nakoula also told the court on Thursday that his name was Mark Basseley Youseff, and said he had been using that name since 2002, although his previous conviction was under the Nakoula name.

A clip from the US-made film was dubbed into Arabic, provoking widespread anger for its disrespectful portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

The film was made on a very low budget, with insults and offensive inferences to the Prophet Mohammad and Islam crudely dubbed on afterwards.

Earlier, the Obama administration had requested Google, the company that owns YouTube, to remove the clip. The technology firm refused, saying the film did not violate its rules.

The clip was uploaded to YouTube in July, but violence only broke out on 11 September, after Arabic TV stations broadcast it.

The clip has not broken any laws in the US, where freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution’s first amendment.

Four Americans, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya earlier this month.

Meanwhile, some of the actors in the video have come forward to say they were misled. They said had been hired to appear in a film called Desert Warriors, which did not mention Islam or the Prophet Muhammad in the script.